Using Effects
in the Recording Studio

How to Tweak Up Special
Effects that will Transform your Audio

by Rich the TweakMeister

TC
Electronic M-One XL 24-Bit Dual Engine/Effects ProcessorNow with 25 incredible effects, this
dual-engine processor delivers world-class effects and professional
capabilities. Effects include XL Reverbs, Chorus, Tremolo, Pitch, Delay,
Dynamics, and more. . Tweak:
Great sound for the buck. Generally regarded as having high quality
"natural" sounding reverbs without the metallic artifacts of other reverbs.
Competes with the Lexicon MPX 500. Lots of debate over which is best.

Lexicon PCM91 Digital Stereo Reverb ProcessorThe PCM 91 offers Lexicon's highest quality
reverbs in a compact, affordable package with a powerful interface which
allows both easy access and a wealth of programming capabilities for the
sound designer. All of the features of the acclaimed PCM 90 are included,
plus full AES/EBU I/O, new Dual Reverb algorithms, and new presets with
dynamic spatialization effects for 2-channel or surround applications. All
of the Dual Reverb algorithms and presets (available for the PCM 90 on a PC
card) are built into the PCM 91.
Tweak: Pro all the way. Some claim it pays for itself.

TC
Electronic D-Two Rhythmic Digital DelayWith the introduction of the D-Two TC Electronic have once again
succeeded in developing cutting edge technology, expanding the way you work
with your effects processor! Your creativity will be the only limit when it
comes to exploring the endless number of delay possibilities within the
D-Two. Tweak: This is a
premium delay unit that will someday be mine.

The name "SPX" has been synonymous with
"professional multi-effect processor" for more than 15 years, and
the models like SPX90, SPX90II, SPX900, SPX1000 and SPX990 have been
the most commonly found equipment in the studio and SR racks.

MXR
M101 Phase 90 PhaserProvides the
classic, 4-stage phasing sound with continuous variable speed control. Phase
90 fixed regeneration level adds intensity and is particularly effective for
keyboards. Tweak: It's a
remake of a 70's shifter. Defacto. This is the phase shifter. I have
the original.

MXR
M135 Smart Gate Pedal If you're addicted to
the indispensable juice of a high gain amp or a string of stomp boxes, you
need this pedal. Because along with your hot-wired tones, you're probably
getting a generous helping of noise. Equipped with 3 selectable types of
noise reduction, Hiss, Mid, and Full, the Smart Gate bites down on sizzle
and hum but lets the smallest detail of your playing through
Tweak: Glamorous, no, Useful
Yes! Particularly if you chain stuff up

Big
Briar MF101 Moogerfooger Low Pass FilterThe moogerfooger Lowpass Filter is a 2-pole/4-pole,
variable-resonance, voltage-controlled filter, plus a fast-acting envelope
follower. Control parameters are signal mix, cutoff frequency, resonance
amount, and envelope amount. Also see the
MF 102
Ring ModulatorTweak:
The classic Moog Filter, for those who must have it.

E

ffects are everywhere in our gear. We
have effects plugins of almost limitless possibility, rack mount effects units
at nearly every price range, synthesizers with "built in" effects modules,
effects controllers that track hand movements in the air or our finger on
an XY surface, and today's newest sequencers have effects whose parameters can
be automated and modulated as the sequencer runs. So much power! Yet
there is so little knowledge! Knowledge of what effects are, how and when
to use them, and how to create them. I'm going to help you out by telling
you some of the things I have learned about using effects that should help you
get a better grasp on what you are doing. And I'll give you some cool
ideas to try.

An effect
is the modulation or modification of an audio signal to make it sound more
interesting. The use of effects, historically, has followed the
development of audio recording devices form the beginning. To really
understand the terminology used in modern effects racks and plugins, you
need to understand how these words came into being in the first place.
Yep, I'm gonna take you there, so jump in my time machine and we'll go back,
back, back...

Reverb Effects.

Before the widespread proliferation of television sets in the 1950s, reverb
effects were already in use in studios making records. The early reverbs
were based on microphone and transducer technology. Reverb was created
naturally in good sounding rooms or "chambers" with highly reflective walls and
movable baffles. Microphones were placed in the room at various location to pick
up the ambient sound. These were large, expensive rooms of about 2000
square feet! Here's a
pic of a great reverberant chamber. Few studios could afford to
build a room this size, so quite quickly, plate and foil reverbs came about.
The Plate reverb was really a large steel plate, held up inside a frame
so it could vibrate freely. The plates were anywhere between 6 and 18 feet tall
and had to be isolated in a room of its own. Imagine trying to do a home
studio in those days! Amplified soundwaves would make the plate radiate,
like a large gong does, and microphones would pick up these vibrations and send
them back to the control room as an audio signal. So when you look at your
digital FX box and see "plate reverb" and "chamber reverb" that's what these
effects are tryng to emulate through digital mathematics. Lets move on. .
The Spring reverb came about next and was quickly adopted by guitar amps.
Inside these units was a metal spring, like a Slinky, that vibrated with
the amplified audio. You may have seen guitarists bang on their amps to
get the spring to distort, and many radio shows used this effect to simulate
thunder and lightning. Here's a
pic of how it worked.

Delay effects

Early delay effects were made based on tape recorder technology and were made on
reel to reel tape recorders. Due to the gap between the
playback head and record head, it was easy to get echo by simply monitoring the signal from
both heads at the same time. Because
you could slow down and speed up the reels (by hand, or later with VariSpeed),
you could get echoes of various length. Later reel to reels let you add the
playback signal back to the source signal, which created feedback (that
would go wildly out of control if you added too much). One innovation done
on tape decks was called Flanging.

While the reels were moving, the
engineer would put his hand on the flange of the source reel to slow it down
slightly and create the effect. When the slowed down source signal was added to
the original signal at the playback head, the slight change in pitch could
create the authentic flange effects Now you know where the term came from
on your stomp box. Anothereffect that worked in a similar way was
phase shifting. Here the source signal was delayed from the
playback signal and added back in at an equal level with feedback. The
result was an audio signal that shimmered and swooshed as the two signals went
in and out of phase.

Chorusing was another effect the reel to reel did.
By increasing the drag on the flange, the source signal would slow down even
more to where a solo vocalist sounded like a chorus group. Finally, one could
record a slightly slowed track next to the source track. This effect is
called "doubling" and results in a thicker vocal. You have probably
heard this a few million times on records. Probably the ultimate tape
effects were Tape loops, and with these, special effects turned into a craft
all it own. In his early days, the Tweak himself did some of these
experiments. One was to take two reel to reel recorders and stretch the
tape from the source reel of deck 1 to the take up reel of deck 2.

After
you talked through the microphone the sound would go in and out of 4 heads, with
feedback on both machines. After your recorded your material, you could
"rock the reels" and get all kinds of flanging effects, double slapback effects,
pitch warping effects, syncopated delays "multi tap" delays.

What, Effects without
Plugins?

Interestingly, many of the above are all
effects you can get in a modern digital audio sequencer without using any
plugins at all. You simply copy tracks and offset the pitch and start time.
And guess what, it usually sounds better and more authentic if you craft an
effect this way. And if you really want to stand out from the crowd, go
down to the local pawn shop and find an unloved reel to reel sitting there.

By now you should be marveling at how inventive
human being have been to make their audio standout from the rest. Why?
Because new and unheard effects often translated into mega-hit records
especially when paired with a well known artist (Madonna, dahling, you are
invited to the TweakLab at anytime!). And it is still going on. In the
70s and through the 80s, effects technology took off on the low end with
guitar pedals featuring distortion, wah-wah, chorusing, flanging and phase
shifting. Analog delays used tape inside a small box with several playback heads
. One of the classics here was the Roland Space Echo. Roland also
had a line of inexpensive spring reverbs as well in their new Boss line.
Dedicated rack units featuring microprocessors came next and as the home
studio market boomed companies realized they could put these computer models of
effect, called algorithms into a rom chip. The digital delay
was first and was quckly followed by digital reverb which at the
beginning was very expensive, and then finally multi-effects boxes that did
everything. Some landmarks in the development of effects were the Midiverb, the product that brought Alesis into the recording world.
The Midiverb was a flat square box that had several types of digital reverb for
abound $500 bucks. Yamaha came out with the SPX-90 which boasted 90
different FX programs that were user editable and recallable by midi program
changes. I think I paid about $775 for mine. I still have it, and it
still works and sounds great. Effects units then proliferated till they
were nearly everywhere and the prices on them have plummeted on all but the best
quality effects units.

The Plugin Revolution.

It became evident after a while that what distinguished a quality effects unit
from an inferior one was mostly due to the quality of the software algorithm,
the code. Because the code was developed on a computer, it was just a
short step to use the computer's audio resources to play the effects. The
plugin, a small program containing an effect algorithm was born and by 1997,
were making inroads in Logic and Cubase VST. You can read all about
plugins on my plugin page.
Early plugins sounded OK when they just sat there doing an effect, but if you
changed a parameter, you'd often get (and still do get) a digital zipper-like
noise. Improvements of the last few years have made these dynamics
smoother and more musical to the point where plugins can now be tweaked in real
time on a computer, in way like the early engineer could rock the reels. This
has brought into the fray new ways to control effects. We have
devices like the Alesis Air FX, Roland's D-Beam that work off of hand
movements in the air, and touch surfaces like the Korg Kaoss Pad, touch
strips on synths, and dedicated controller surfaces like Logic Control
that will allow use of faders and knobs to control plugins in real time, while
automating the moves for playback.

Tweak's FX Tips

Ok the history lesson is over now we get on to
how to use effects, uh, effectively. Were going to get into how the brain
interprets audio information and some practical things like chaining effects,
and the art of leveling and balancing effects in a digital or analog mixer.

Be Extreme

Just like our early ancestors came up with
flanging and delays by abusing the motors on their reel to reel decks, we need
to be just as extreme today to get new great sounding effects. Rule
number one. There are no rules. The coolest sounds come from a
relentless drive to experiment. Use any device in you studio to create
your effects. Go WILD. That's how you come up with great stuff.
Newbies, Try this: So what happens when you run your vocal through a
guitar distortion pedal then through the audio input of your electribe and tweak
the filter? Go try it, It's cool!

Be Subtle

Reverb on Vocals. Unless you are going
for a special effect, do not drown the vocal in reverb. Instead, try
this, bring up the return on the reverb till you hear it, then notch it back
a little. Here the reverb provides depth and thickens, but doesn't have
hardly any tail. On pop songs, too much reverb hanging there through the
whole song is a sure sign of newbie production. Remember, people want to
listen to the vocalist and not to your reverb.

Clocking

We all know that a good digital delay will sync
to tempo by midi clocks. This is cool for trance and stuff. If you
never did this before do it and get used to it. If you have done this
before, it's time to take it another step. Try this: Set the delay
to the wrong bpm on purpose and find a setting that offers a strange
perspective.

Ambient FX

You want really otherworldly ethereal ambient
sounds? Pay close attention now. Try it: Call up a flute or choir
synth patch and drown the sucker in the best reverb your system has. Hit a
chord of notes in a quick stab, so the reverb tail rings for a second.
Sample to Wave. In the wave editor, cut out everything except the
tail so all you hear is a reverb tail. Loop, it and put a slow fade on the
attack. Send it back a sampler. Listen--pretty darn ethereal, eh?
You can also do this with drums.

Contrast

So what is it that makes an effect standout?
It's differance' an esoteric term for contrast. The function of an effect
is to draw attention. It does so when the listeners perspective is changed
and they have to pay attention to see what happened. In order to have
difference, you must have a norm. Try it: You have a typical vocal pop
song. For the last phrase of the 1st verse, drop out the drums and put the
vocal through a hi pass filter to create a telephone voice. Yeah, this
effect is used a lot but it works all the time. Why is that? The 1st
3 phrases of the verse set a norm and then you violated it with differance'.
You can do effects like these with even a crappy FX box. As it is with
other parts of making a song, it's really not the gear, it's how the mind
creatively uses the gear.

Cascading, filtered Delays

Simple and evocative. Try it:
Chain up some effects as follows Standard echo with medium
feedback-->Delay with width modulation or a pitch randomizer set subtley-->analog
filter with resonance, swept, --> another delay, either synchro slapback echo
tweaked in and out of hi feedback. Run your bassline through that.

Gate Yer Drums.

Try it: For the newbie, run the drums
through a standard gated reverb program and play with the parameters till it
sounds cool. I say this because most people never touch setting on their
FX boxes and you really are missing out. If you are advanced, lets go a
few more steps. Lets put a limiter on it so we can make the drums sound
like loud bursts over pure silence. Got it sounding cool? Ok take it
off the drums and put it on something else.

Use MIDI program changes

Newbie: This is another thing that can
be used as an effect in itself. Try it: Change the program every
time the vocalist takes a breath. Advanced: In your sequencer,
route a randomizer to program change commands. Chain up 3 FX boxes.
Yep, click on the randomizer to get the three boxes to change at the same time
to a random patch. Now lets go another step. Have Box one change
every bar, Box 2 change every half note and box 2 any other interval you desire.
It's totally cool.

Abuse your reverb

Run it through a compressor so the tail noise
is amplified and also so it bring all kinds of system noise into the signal.
Record it and compress again to accentuate the nastiness. Now run it
through a gate and set the threshold where it constantly cuts in and out.

Make your old analog mono synth sparkle.

Newbie: Simple. Just run it through a chorus effect without any shimmer with the
frequency very slow. Really makes it sound awesome and wide. Advanced
For a sense of tight, transparent audio run the whole mix minus the vocal and
minus the drums through a light, tight, chorus.

Dirty pots make great effects.

If you have any piece of gear that has a dirty
knob that makes noise when you turn it, don't clean it! Run it through a
delay with some source material. A great alternative to record surface
noise.